Hog and Hominy

Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas.

Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945, Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.

What makes Frederick Douglass Opie's work so powerful and so important is that it transcends the essentialist concept of 'soul food' as rooted in timeless cultural attributes of people of African descent. Opie shows not only that African American traditions of cooking were constantly changing in response to contact with Europeans, American Indians, and immigrants from many different parts of the world, but also that as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the agricultural and culinary traditions of African peoples were in flux as a result of global trading patterns.

Mark Naison, professor of African American studies and history and director of urban studies, Fordham University

Hog and Hominy is a wonderful walk through the culinary traditions of African Americans, providing a history of African Americans simultaneously.

Jeffrey Ogbar, director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut, and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity

[An] elegant, detailed history... Highly recommended.

Choice

Hog and Hominy provides a definitive history of the grand social forces and unforgettable personalities that have revolutionized Africa American cooking since the twilight of the Jim Crow system.

Andrew Warnes, Gastronomica

Hog and Hominy contributes to understanding the important place of soul food in African American culture and of African American cuisine in the American melting pot.

Carole Counihan, Journal of American Ethnic History

List of IllustrationsIntroduction1. The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Columbian Exchange2. Adding to my Bread and Greens3. Hog and Hominy4. The Great Migration5. The Beans and Greens of Necessity6. Eating Jim Crow7. The Chitlin Circuit8. The Declining Influence of Soul Food9. Food RebelsEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex

Web Features:

Fred Opie's blog on the history of food traditions and the politics of food Food as a Lens.

About the Author

Frederick Douglass Opie teaches history at Babson College. He is author of Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala, 1882-1923 and a blogger at www.frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com, where he conducts "Daily Musings on Culture, History, and Food with Related Recipes." He has appeared on the popular American Public Media show The Splendid Table and is a regular guest on Philadelphia National Public Radio's The Chef's Table.